GREEN MEANIETHE BIRTH OF STEVE VAI’S

by Larry DiMarzio and Eric Kirkland

Steve Photos: Larry DiMarzioGuitar Photos: Michael Mesker

D I M A R Z I O S T O R I E S

Some of the world’s most famous guitars remain forever faithful to their inception —

prized for their true-to-original form — and simply become better as they gracefully age. Others only take on their finest form and notoriety after modifications and innovative customization. The latter certainly describes Steve Vai’s legendary “Green Meanie.” DiMarzio is particularly proud to have played a role in its birth as well as devising its specialized wiring scheme and pickups.

This is how it all happened, as recalled by Larry DiMarzio and Steve Blucher...

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When Steve Vai landed the Alcatrazz tour in 1984, he needed an

extra guitar or two for the road. He contacted Grover Jackson and

one of the guitars supplied was a Charvel with a basswood, Strat-

style body. At that time, it had an amber-to-cherry sunburst finish and

a locking Floyd Rose bridge.

This guitar soon began its progression of improvements, hot rod mods,

stickers, and experiments to evolve into the Green Meanie with Steve

Vai at the helm.

DiMarzio got the call in the spring of 1986, shortly after Steve had

been selected for the virtuoso slot in David Lee Roth’s newly formed

band – also featuring Billy Sheehan on bass and Gregg Bissonette on

drums. Vai had already used DiMarzios in a number of his guitars, so

he asked us to meet him at NYC’s Power Station studio, where Eat ’Em and Smile was coming to life.

When DiMarzio’s chief technician Steve Blucher arrived, Vai took him

into the live room. The guitar that Steve Blucher saw that day already

had a bunch of changes. It was now day-glow green and had three

pickups in an H-S-H configuration.

The most radical modification was the removal of wood behind the

Floyd Rose bridge, which made it possible for Vai to pull up on the

bar and raise the pitch more than two full steps. Although it was

typical for a floating Strat or Floyd bridge to have a bit of upward

play, this transformed the bridge’s range in a revolutionary way. It

became one of many alterations first tried on the Green Meanie, later

incorporated into Vai’s signature Ibanez Jem guitars and ultimately

adopted as a standard throughout the industry.

On the first day, Blucher also tested the guitar with Vai’s setup,

which centered around recently modified 100-watt Marshall heads

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from Jose Arredondo and Lee Jackson. Blucher recalled that it was

the loudest rig he’d ever heard in the studio, and Vai laughingly

supported that memory in a recent interview with Pete Thorn, stating

that, “With Dave Roth, the stage volume of the guitar was the loudest

thing in the history of man … Dave could not get enough guitar – he

had to have more and more … When I played a note, if you weren’t

protected, you would never have children again.”

Vai and Blucher then went back into the control room and listened

to some of the scratch tracks for the new album to get a better idea

of what changes Vai wanted.

From the recordings, Blucher noticed that Vai’s deft touch smoothed

out much of the brightness he heard while testing the live rig. Vai’s

picking technique also added a specific warmth and increased bass

response that made the guitar sound fuller.

Vai really knew exactly what he wanted in terms of changes: more

definition between strings (note clarity), get rid of the muddiness, and

it had to retain all its character with distortion and delay. This made

perfect sense to DiMarzio, because our goal has always been to get

the guitar to sound right. It should sound like what you want, what

you hear in your head, with minimal correction, and it has to match

well in the context of the gear and the band.

GETTING THE SOUND RIGHT On Steve Blucher’s next visit to the studio, he began changing

pickups, starting with the bridge position and usually installing two

sets per day. But at the end of each test, Vai requested that the

original pickups were to be put back in the guitar as a reference.

Pickup installations were done in the Power Station’s maintenance

room, where the studio’s electronic equipment was serviced, and

usually happened while the band was on breaks.

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For the next couple of weeks, both Steves worked closely together to

refine the guitar’s pickups and tone. At the end of each day, Blucher

would order new pickups from the DiMarzio factory and make

corrections from the previous day’s tests.

All the pickup comparisons were done live, although there might

have been some A/B test recordings used for the evaluations. David

Lee Roth (already noted as wanting a true guitar extravaganza) was

also in the control room for most of the guitar tracking.

A HAPPY ACCIDENT AND A NEW WIRING While working on the guitar, Blucher discovered that the original neck

position humbucker had one shorted coil, but that the other coil was

still producing output.

He mentioned it and Vai recalled the sound changing after the high

“E” string got caught under the neck pickup during a tremolo dive

bomb. However, Vai liked the new “tubey” sound better in position

four and wanted to keep it.

Blucher knew that no one had ever split a coil from the neck

humbucker and combined it with a single coil in the center position,

so he devised a wiring scheme that connected the one coil from the

neck humbucker to the middle pickup. Blucher changed the polarity

on the center single coil pickup so it would be hum-canceling in both

the second and fourth positions (combined appropriately with either

the bridge or neck pickups). And he got it all to work with a DiMarzio

5-position switch. (See diagram on page 8.) This exact wiring was

later incorporated into the Ibanez JEM.

WATCH: Steve Vai demos his different pickup wiring sounds.

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Above: The modified lower horn cutaway.Below: The (since repaired) bridge area.

After several weeks of comparisons, Vai settled on PAF Pro™ pickups

in both the neck and bridge positions, with an HS-2™ wired in single-

coil mode (top coil only) in the middle position.

A NEW BODY SHAPE At some point between takes, Vai asked Blucher about deepening

the cutaway on the high “E” side of the body allowing better access

to the high notes up the neck.

After the session ended that day, Blucher took the guitar home and

recut the lower bout of the guitar on his kitchen table with a Dremel

Tool, remarking that he had to stuff towels under his apartment door

to keep the smell of the overheated basswood from alarming his

neighbors.

CRASH OF THE GREEN MEANIEIn the middle of the 1986 David Lee Roth live tour, Blucher got a call

from Elwood Francis (Vai’s new guitar tech) and was told that the

body of the Meanie had split and the bridge had pulled out right

before the band was to play a sold-out show in Madison Square

Garden. Did he know of anyone that could do a rush repair? Blucher

recommended the guitar be overnighted to Roger Sadowsky, of

Sadowsky Guitars and helped arrange the guitar’s return as soon as

the glue was dry.

Once the David Lee Roth tour ended, the Green Meanie was retired

and is now on display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland,

Ohio. During those few short years, it became a visual and sonic

extension of Steve Vai’s seemingly limitless musical gifts, his singularly

eccentric style, and capacity for turning sound into a luminous

being. No one could have imagined the monster it would become,

the countless players it would inspire, instruments it would influence,

and timeless music it would bring to life.

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PAF Pro® Green Meanie H/S/H WITH SPLIT COILS The original wiring for Steve Vai’s legendary Charvel “Green Meanie.” The 5-way switch is wired so that Position 1 = neck; Position 2 = neck (1 coil) & middle; Position 3 = Middle; Position 4 = middle & bridge (1 coil); Position 5 = bridge. For a complete wiring kit including all the hardware in the diagram above, click here.Wiring

DiMarzio, Inc. 1388 Richmond Terrace, PO Box 100387, Staten Island, NY 10310 • Tel. General: (718) 981-9286 • Toll Free: (800) 221-6468 • Tech Support: (718) 816-8112 • Email: tech@dimarzio.com • www.dimarzio.com©2020 All rights reserved. The information contained in this drawing is the sole property of DiMarzio, Inc. Any reproduction in part or as a whole without the written permission of DiMarzio, Inc. is prohibited.

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TO BRIDGE GROUND

NECK PICKUP

PAF PRO® DP151

MIDDLE PICKUP

HS-2 DP116

BRIDGE PICKUP

PAF PRO® DP151

BLACKBARE

SWITCHCRAFT® OUTPUT JACK

(2-CONDUCTOR)EP1301

5-WAY SWITCH FOR STRAT®

EP1104

VOLUME500K CUSTOM

TAPER POTEP1201

TONE500K CUSTOM

TAPER POTEP1201

.022µF CAPACITOR

EP1022

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